


long reach

by Nadin



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Wondertrev Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 17:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13194669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadin/pseuds/Nadin
Summary: He looks exactly the way he did when Diana last saw him a hundred years and three days ago, down to the grease stains on his pants from riding that ancient bike and his wind-tousled hair.He looks like a ghost.And for a split second, she is scared that a ghost is all he is.Steve Trevor makes a deal with Hades to come back to Diana.





	long reach

**Author's Note:**

> This is my gift for @newspapersandbreakfasts for the @wondertrevnet Secret Santa exchange! Happy holidays!

He returns on the day of the first snowfall, a hundred years and three days after Diana saw him last on the cold landing strip in Belgium. After she saw his plane go up in flames until the brightness was all there was, and it hurt so much that for a moment, she thought that it was she who was blown to pieces until there was nothing left. Until then, she could never have imagined that one’s soul could ache like that, like something inside her died with him, something that could never be revived or replaced. Something that could only be mourned, so great was the loss.

But on the day of the first snow, a hundred years and three days later, the watch that Steve left behind - the only tangible proof of his existence that Diana still has left, the watch that stopped the moment he died, and the very one she’s kept in her bedside table since - comes to life.

It is the sound of it that wakes her, barely audible but a disturbance nonetheless. Something different for the first time in so long it might have as well be as loud as a grenade doing off.

Steve is back. She knows it as surely as that the sun is coming up in the east.

At last.

Her hands shaking and her heart hammering frantically, Diana reaches into the drawer and pulls the watch out, her fingers finding it hard, if not impossible, to hold on to it without dropping it.

It is, in fact, ticking, and the world outside her window is coloured white.

\---

There is nowhere else for him to go, she thinks as she walks briskly down the narrow cobbled street as the snow dances around her, a veil of white that smells of cold and chimney smoke and dancing in a town square several lifetimes ago. She is alive with anticipation like never before, her heart fluttering in her ribcage like a panicked bird.

If she is wrong… There is only so much pain and disappointment one can bear, and she has exceeded the limit so long ago she can’t even remember. Can’t remember not carrying this sadness inside her.

She can’t be wrong.

It rarely snows in London, and never like this, to her memory. Not in a hundred years. Never like the world is nothing but whiteness all around her.

Diana tucks her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat, her steps a hurried staccato on the sidewalk. Soon, she thinks, the city will be buried completely until they all forget how to find their way from underneath it all.

She rounds the corner and stops abruptly, all air wheezing out of her body. All these years, all the scenarios she’s played out in her head, and she still finds herself completely unprepared, paralyzed on the spot. Her mind is blank. For a long moment, all she can do is stare.

Steve Trevor is standing in front of the building that used to house his last apartment a century ago, the one that Diana tried to buy several times after he was officially proclaimed dead but to no avail. The place has been renovated a few times since then. It must look completely alien to Steve who stands there with his face lifted, either studying the upper floors or watching the snowflakes drift down upon him.

They land on his face and his hair, on the shoulders of his green army jacket—

He looks exactly the way he did when Diana last saw him a hundred years and three days ago, down to the grease stains on his pants from riding that ancient bike and his wind-tousled hair.

He looks like a ghost.

And for a split second, she is scared that a ghost is all he is.

Is it possible?

Steve turns then, noticing her half a block away from him – the only dark spot in the storm of white around them. He lips curve, forming into a crooked smile that lodges itself straight into Diana’s heart.

“Steve,” his name falls from her lips, puffing out as a small cloud in the cold air, so different and almost unfamiliar when said aloud than merely spoken in her dreams. Almost like she’s forgotten the sound of it, the way it tastes on her tongue. She has missed it so bad it is making her chest ache.

His smile widens for a flicker of a moment and a sob rises in her throat, and then she is running toward him, desperate to make sure that he is real, scared that he isn’t.

And he is running, too, running toward her, slipping on the snowy sidewalk, the wind blowing the hair back from his forehead. The time stops, a couple hundred feet between them feel endless, and just as Diana starts to think that she’ll go right through him, Steve is right there, catching her in his arms as she wraps hers around him, holding him as tight as she can, her whole body shaking.

He is solid and real and warm, his chest rising and falling rapidly against hers as he whispers her name over and over again, and it’s the only thing she to hear.

“Steve,” she murmurs, tears stinging her eyes and burning her cheeks. He smells the same too, of male and gunpowder and winter and mud; it reminds her of the battlefield in Belgium, flooding her senses, bringing back the things she so desperately wanted to forget but is destined to remember forever. Her fingers clutch handfuls of his jacket. She feels his lips on her hair, her temple, his breath warm on her skin.

“Diana…”

She wants him to keep saying her name for as long as she breathes.

Diana pulls back just far enough to look at his face, her fingers touching his cheeks, running along his chin, through his hair that is damp with the melting show. The impossible blue of his eyes keeps her captive. Steve smiles, touches her face, his fingers cold and as calloused as she remembers.  

“How--” She starts, and is shaking her head before he can respond.

It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to know, not yet.

“Interesting story,” Steve chuckles shakily. His fingers tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, but it falls right back on her cheek. Diana’s face is crumpling.  

“You’re back,” she whispers, her voice low and hoarse with tears. “I missed you, I missed you so much.”

Everything she’s kept deep inside her is now bubbling up to the surface, threatening to drown them both under the tidal wave of bittersweet longing.

“I missed you, too,” he murmurs in a soft whoosh of breath.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” her voice cracks, the words tripping over each other, a hot lump in her throat making it hard to breathe, to speak, to think. “I’m so sorry.”

His brows crease, misunderstanding settling in, as his eyes dart between hers in confusion. “What…what are you talking about? Diana--”

She rests her head against his, her breathing ragged and shallow. “I never got to say goodbye,” she is shaking her head again, her eyes squeezed shut. She is trembling all over, the night of his death bright and clear and painfully fresh in her mind, as if no time has passed since then at all. “I never got to say… I wish I--”

“Shhh,” he presses a kiss to her forehead, cutting her off. “Don’t. Please, don’t.” His gaze meets hers again, his thumbs brushing her tears from her cheeks. “No more goodbyes. Never again.”

Diana inhales sharply, a sob mixed with a short laugh of disbelief escapes her lips, before tucking her face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in, pulling him even closer, reveling in the feeling of his arms around her. Solid and real and  _ alive _ .

“I’m sorry,” she repeats almost inaudibly. So softly Steve misses it.

They stand there, in the middle of the street with their arms wound around one another until their heartbeats even out, until their breaths are no longer frantic, until she is certain that he isn’t going to disappear, his voice in her ear and his hand stroking her back the only things that matter.

“How long has it be?” Steve asks after a while, his mouth pressing a light kiss to her hair.

She’s never known that happiness could be so consuming.

“Too long.” Diana draws back again, needing to see him. Needing to never stop looking at him.

His lips quirk slightly. (She notices that they started turning blue, too. It’s getting cold.)

“Long enough to become homeless, I guess,” he jokes, his gaze darting for a brief moment to the building next to them.

She smiles; rests their heads together again as her fingers ran absently over the lapel of his jacket. The sight of it stirs unease in her gut with the memories of the night when she’s lost him, but she pushes them aside. Not now, not when she finally has him back.

“No,” she breathes at last, taking half a step back from Steve and finding his hand. Her fingers lace through his, his smile growing brighter than the sun. “Come, I’ll take you home.”

\---

His mouth is soft and warm on hers, his hands sliding over Diana’s body with easy familiarity, only pausing every now and then to check for her permission. She always gives it. Anything he wants is his to take.

She has questions still, so many of them, more than she is able to count, but then there are things that she needs more than words. He is here, finally, and she is desperate to make sure she isn’t imagining him, needs so desperately to make sure he is truly back. To feel him again until there is nothing else left in the world.

There are things that only Steve knows, the questions only Steve can answer if she wraps her golden lasso around him to get the proof, but when they step into her apartment, they evaporate without a trace. She pulls him to her and his protest is half-hearted and nothing but his damned manners that Diana cares nothing for.

She kisses him and he kisses her back, and she’s already waited for a century. She doesn’t want to waste another second. When his hands slide over her skin, it sparkles alive, tingling under his touch, her heart hammering in her chest, and this is all she needs to know. His mouth trails over her body, thorough and attentive, making her forget herself and the whole universe. Her eyes drop shut, all she can do is feel, the need building up inside her. She’s waited for him for so long.

And then he is moving with her, holding her and catching her and breaking her every fall, and all she can do is hold him tight and pray not to disintegrate in his arms - so great is the bliss of having him back, so fragile it feels, so breakable.

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmurs, capturing her soft sigh of pleasure with his mouth, dragging his lips along her jaw, mindful of how her body stills under every touch, every brush of his skin to hers.

“Don’t…. Don’t stop,” Diana whispers, pulling his closer to her until neither can tell where the one ends and the other one begins. “Please, don’t stop. I can’t--” She nuzzles into his neck, kisses his chin, her fingers card through his hair. “I can’t lose you again.”  

Later, sated and spent, Steve gathers her to him, his arms wrapped around Diana and their legs intertwined.

She lifts her head, her smile lazy and so blissful he can’t believe it. “Hey.”

He is really here.

Steve grins at her; reaches to brush her hair back from her face. “Hey, yourself.”

Her smile widens, so bright it almost blinds him, as she tips her up head to brush a light kiss to his mouth before resting her head on his chest where his heart beats in earnest, his breath still nowhere to be found, much like her own. Here. With her. Back.

“How long has it been?” Steve asks again, running slow patterns over her bare back with his fingers.

“A hundred years, give or take,” Diana says, refusing to let the reality in, not yet. Can’t seem to stop touching him, can’t stop brushing small kisses to his skin.

“A hundred, huh,” he echoes, pensive. “How did you—you didn’t go there just because, did you? To my old apartment…” He doesn’t seem to know how to ask the question, uncertain as to how to even go about the whole ‘a hundred years’ part.

It all feels like a dream; a wonderful, beautiful fantasy, and it is only the weight of Diana pressed into him, the smell of her skin, the pleasant exhaustion that has settled over him that tells Steve that this is real. Finally, after all this time. He needs to keep reminding himself that he won’t have to wake up and find her gone anymore. Not ever again for as long as he lives.

For as long as she’ll have him.

“I knew,” she murmurs. “I knew you’d be there.” And then she tells him about the watch, about keeping it as the most prized possession. About how it stopped the moment the plane exploded and nothing she did to try and fix it worked, not in a hundred years.

Until this morning.

“Steve?” She raises her head to look at him when he stays quiet.

His expression is more confused than troubled, and maybe a little guilt-ridden for the reason she can’t see. Diana reaches to brush her fingers through his hair, and he turns to her, his features softening momentarily. Like she is what he needs to hold on to reality. Like she is his anchor.

“What happened?” She asks after a long moment, giving up on the plan of simply ignoring the fact of his sudden reappearance like it is the most normal thing in the universe.

Steve lets out a long breath, his eyes growing dark.

“I died,” he stutters. The words get stuck in his throat, refusing to come out.

Diana bites her lip, studying him for a long moment, her fingers running absently over his cheek, over the fine shadow of stubble prickly under her touch. “I know,” she nods. “I was there.”

“Diana…”

“What happened?” She repeats, somewhat scared now that there is more to the story than he is letting on. There has to be, she reasons with herself. It’s not every day that dead men come back to life. “Steve? Tell me.”

He swallows; she can feel him grow tense, and an immense, overwhelming need to reassure him, promise him that she will never let anything happen to him again, not for as long as she lives, sweeps over her.

Steve licks his lips, his breath catches. “I died,” he repeats. “And then I went…”

“Where?”

His gaze goes past her; Diana can feel the distance grow between them, and she gently touches his chin to turn his face to her again.

“I’m sorry,” he mouths almost soundlessly, his eyes begging for forgiveness. “I’m sorry for not believing you from the start. I should have.” He pauses, watching her with such sadness and remorse that her heart squeezes fiercely, her chest aching helplessly from not being able to stop it, put an end to his pain. “Maybe it wasn’t only about Ares, maybe people were to blame to. For some of it, at least, but I should have… I had to have known better.”

“Why… what are you saying?” Her voice breaks ever so slightly, and even this close to him, to the warmth of his body, she feels a shiver run through her.

“Maybe if I believed you from the start, it would’ve worked out differently.”

“Don’t say that,” she whispers. “You’re here now. It’s all that matters, my love.”

He nods, but she is not sure if he’s heard her.

“When I died I—I went the underworld, or a purgatory, I guess.” The words are soft, uncertain, as if he can’t believe what he is saying. “I met…” Steve pauses, and in the grey light of an overcast afternoon, a shadow of doubt passes over his face. Diana traces her fingertip over his brow. “I met Hades.” Steve’s lips curve into a faint smile. “Interesting guy, very fond of you. Apparently, he had some issues with Ares.”

Her eyebrow arches in surprise. “Did he?”

“Yeah. Ended up being very happy about his brother’s ultimate demise.” He twists a lock of her hair around his finger, stroking it absently. Much like he did on the night in Veld. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, can’t believe it’s--”

“Real?” She asks.

“I made a deal with Hades,” Steve continues.

“A deal?” Diana echoes. “What kind of--”

“He promised to send me back if I promise to make you happy,” he finishes softly. “Ridiculously, endlessly happy. So happy you can’t even imagine.” His voice drops. “If you’ll let me.”

“I will.” She nods once, and then again, feeling her lips tug up at the corners, her eyes burning with unbidden tears again. Almost too good to be real, almost impossible. Her hand curls over his jaw and she presses a hasty kiss to his lips. “I will. Anything you want.” She rests her forehead to his cheek. “I wanted for you to live, Steve. I wanted it so bad.”

\---

The world is a new place, and arguably, the one where he no longer belongs. So different Steve can’t even begin to wrap his mind around it. Who knew that only a hundred years could change literally everything, and none of his memories and knowledge were making any sense anymore?

The technology alone is something beyond his wildest dreams. Just about everything else – well, he doesn’t even know where to begin. He might have as well landed on another planet so alien it all is to him. Madness is one way to describe it, and there is little else he can say about it.

There is an odd quality to being a dead man, too.

Technically, he doesn’t exist anymore, and it feels both thrilling and more than a little disconcerting. Technically, he can do whatever he wants, be whoever he wants to be, and the enormity of it overwhelms Steve, leaves him breathless. He has a distinct memory of making maneuvers in the sky when he couldn’t tell up and down apart. Now, he feels the same way.

And then there is Diana, and his heart swells with affection every time he thinks about her, every time he so much as looks at her. He can’t even begin to imagine how confusing this world must have been to her when he left her here alone to fend for herself, a stranger in a strange land. The irony of being in the exact same position as she was when they first met is not lost on him.

“Don’t do it,” she stops him when he apologizes for it one night, about a week after he comes back as they walk back to her apartment after dinner. “You didn’t choose for that to happen, and it was my choice to come here, and to stay.”

Steve heaves a sigh but doesn’t push the subject. He did choose it, though, even if it didn’t feel like much of a choice at the time. There is little he can do about it now. She’s managed after all, and one day, he hopes, she will tell him how. There is so much he wants to know it feels like one lifetime won’t be enough for it.

“Why did you, by the way?” He asks instead, reaching for her hand and twining their fingers together. Can’t seem to stop touching her. “I thought you hated London.”

Shockingly, London is the same as he remembers. Sure, the storefronts have grown flashier, glass and concrete have replaced the stone here and there, but the streets are the way they used to be, the cobbled alleys the same as in his memories. Even a few pubs remained where they’ve always been in his time here. There is comfort in it, in some stability when everything else is chaos. All the things that he used to like about this place, as well as those that he didn’t. There is normalcy to it, and it gives him hope for something… something like getting used to the things the way they are now.  

Diana smiles and shakes her head, her fingers squeeze his tighter. Like him, she seems to never be able to let go. Even when she sleeps, her body is wrapped around his. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I got used to it,” she says. “Besides…”

“Besides?” Steve prompts her, a little playful, a little curious. Loves flirting with her, loves the way she responds to it.

“It was the only place where I felt the closest to you,” she admits.

“Diana…”

“Don’t,” she stops him. “Don’t apologize again. None of what happened was your fault.”

“I wasn’t going to apologize,” Steve says, pausing and making her stop, too. In the light of a streetlamp, she looks ethereal. So beautiful it takes his breath away. “I was going to—” he trails off. Tries again. “I wish I were here. With you. For everything that happened since then.”

He tugs her closer until there is nothing but a breath of air between them.

Diana’s hand curls over the back of his neck, her fingers playing with his hair and her eyes so tender it hurt. “I wish so, too.”

“And I wish I knew how this damned thing works,” he adds with dramatic exasperation, pulling a cell phone that Diana bought for him just a day prior, sleek and fancy, and more terrifying than anything that Steve’s ever known. “I bet I’m the only one who doesn’t.”

She laughs then, a sound like sunshine, and pulls him in for the kiss. It is cold still, colder than on the day when he came back, the chilly wind nipping at their cheeks and noses, and her mouth feels scalding-hot on his by contrast. His body hums in anticipation of what’s coming when they get back to her place.  _ Their _ place.

“You’ll figure it out,” Diana murmurs breathlessly between the kisses.

He has never felt more alive.

\---

Steve wakes up at night with a scream lodged in his throat, and the fire of the explosion licking his skin, so hot and bright he can’t stand it. Not even squeezing his eyes shut helps. And it hurts. It hurts so bad to think of the things that he never had a chance to do and now never will, and Diana…

It’s been a century, and it still feels like it only happened yesterday. This is the one thing that’s never changed for him, and he knows that it never will…

A hand brushes to his face, and a voice husky with sleep calls his name.

“Steve?”

It pulls him out of the dream that keeps him captive, keeps his hostage in the hell of his own mind.

Steve blinks his eyes open. His breath short, his chest heaving, and his heartbeat nowhere to be found. She leans close to him, her hand on his face, her thumb running over his cheekbone, her lips on his skin. He can feel himself shake.

She’s asked him about the underworld, and Hades, and everything that happened in a place where the time runs differently and a minute can feel like a moment or like a century, but his memories started to fade already, and in a few weeks there will be nothing left of them. Yet, that night a hundred years ago still feels fresh and vivid, and it scares him. The fear of not knowing who he is without what happened then.

“I’m here,” Diana’s voice breaks through the frantic chaos in his head, and he is finally back, in the dark bedroom of her apartment. “You’re safe.” She presses a kiss to his temple, and Steve turns his head to look at her even though it is too dark to see anything, and all there is is her breath on his skin and her soothing warmth next to him. “I will never let anything happen to you. Never. No matter what.”

“Diana…” His voice is hoarse and low, barely a whisper.

It’s not the first time this happens. The nightmares are fairly frequent. There are nights when he can’t so much as close his eyes, and she is always there, keeping him safe from himself.

He needs time.

“I’m here,” she repeats. A promise and an affirmation, something that keeps him grounded, at peace. “Always.”

“Always,” Steve echoes, tugging her close until she’s nestled half on top of him, solid and real; sweet and reassuring weight. He tucks her face into his neck, feeling her breath of his skin, heartbeat to heartbeat.

Safety.

Home.

“The same one again?” Diana asks when his breathing has deepened again, his hold on her not as desperate, albeit just as tight. “The dream?”

“Yes.” Steve swallows, willing his feverish mind to calm. He runs his hand up and down her spine, mindful of how her body responds even to the smallest of touches. His eyes drift shut, marveling in the sensation of her closeness. “The plane burns… I die, and never come back.”

“But you have,” she murmurs, kissing along his throat. “And you’re here to stay.”

He has no response to that. Some part of him still waits for the other shoe to drop, for his deal with Hades to turn into a figment of his imagination. And who can blame him for it? But every day he wakes up and he is still here, and every day, it feels like a miracle.

“I’ve been dreaming about you, too,” she whispers a while later just as Steve starts to think that she must have drifted off.

“You have?” He kisses the crown of her head. There is something in her voice that makes him all but hold his breath. Something about sharing secrets in the dark, when everything but their voices is concealed and hidden, that makes it almost sacred.

“I wanted…” Diana raises her head; he can feel her gaze on him even though there isn’t much to see. She brushes her hand through his hair, her palm curling over his jaw. “I wanted so badly for you to come back, and seeing you die time and time again was like losing my own life piece by piece.”

“Diana…”

She silences him with a kiss, effectively taking his mind off any and all nightmares before resting her head on his chest, pressed to him curve by curve. “Sleep. I will always keep you safe.”

This is not the end of it, Steve is certain of it. There is darkness in his life that he knows will be there to stay, and the memories… this is the thing about the memories – some of them are etched so deep in him it will take Steve several lifetimes to erase them. But Diana… Diana is the light. If there is anyone at all who can chase the darkness away, it is her.

\---

And life goes on, somehow. Wonderful and confusing, and everything that he’s ever wanted it to be. The time with Diana, the time to do everything he’s never even dreamed of because the war took his dreams away. Now, there is just them, and the bliss of knowing that they have a chance this time around. And to hell with the bloody coffee maker that seems to be smarter than him. He knows he will learn. For Diana, he would do anything. Figuring out the buttons on the things is a small price to pay for being with her, for making love to her, for waking up with her, for hearing her laughter, and for feeling the way she makes him feel. For those things alone, he wants to give her the word, and more.

With Steve being back, there is nothing that keeps either of them in London anymore. Diana takes him to the States, to his home city of Chicago.

The last time Steve came for a visit was a hundred and ten years ago, and in the century that has passed since then, it has changed a great deal more than London. It is flashier now, busy in a way he never imagined it could be. Unlike London, it is entirely unrecognizable. It does not feel like home, and he tries to remember if it ever had.

He makes enquiries about his parents. It hurts to think about outliving them by this much, but it’s good to know that they had long lives. He regrets having nothing left of them, not even photographs. Diana promises to check the archives – she’s much better at finding the truth now, and he feels rusty, his days as a spy nothing but a faint memory. He nods but doesn’t respond, overcome with gratitude and sadness.

Later that night in their hotel room, unable to sleep, Steve is standing by the window watching the snowfall outside. Here’s to coming to Chicago in January, he thinks. By the morning, this place will be buried under snow drifts, completely changed.

Diana appears beside him and reaches for his hand, squeezes his fingers. She rests her chin on his shoulder. He inhales her scent, seeps her in. Every time she touches him still feels like magic.

“Are you okay?” She asks softly. Her presence is so comforting he feels the weight lift off his shoulders until he is so light he might just float away, and he would if Diana wasn’t there.

Steve nods, and adds, “I am.”

“Want to talk about it?” She suggests.

He turns to look at her, offers her a smile. It’s a little sad, a little tired, but genuine and warm, and she smiles back. And the sight of it warms him from the inside, gives him hope for everything he never dared to hope of.

He shakes his head. Not because he doesn’t want to talk but because he can’t find anything to say. If those words exist, he doesn’t know what they are yet.

“Maybe some other time,” he responds in hope of finding them later. Knows she won’t forget but she is good at reading him, at not pushing for something he is not comfortable with. He loves her even more for that.

What he’s ever done to deserve her is beyond Steve, and he doesn’t want to think about it too much. Doesn’t want to imagine not having her.

“Come back to bed with me,” Diana asks. Kisses his shoulder, and he nearly forgets the world. She can do that to him.

“In a minute,” Steve promises, and knows that he’ll keep it – he needs her, can’t get enough of her. Knows that she needs him, too, and there it solace in it, in knowing that she loves him as much as she does, that she never seems to tire of saying it to him.

He might need several lifetimes to get used to that, too.

A few minutes later, when his mind has calmed, he returns to the bedroom and slips under the covers only now realizing how cold he’s gotten. Only when he reaches for Diana and her warmth does he feel how numb his toes are, how much he wants to press closer to her until he doesn’t feel like half-icicle anymore. They never turned on the heating, and he tugs Diana closer to him, drawn to her with his very being. She’s awake, he can feel her smile, her body angling closer to him.

Steve’s arm slides around her waist, he kisses her shoulder, trails his mouth toward her neck. He curls around her as her breath catches a little. She rolls in his arms to face him, a little sleepy, and impossibly beautiful. Her hand cups over his cheek.

“Missed you,” her whisper resonates within him.

“Been right here the whole time,” Steve chuckles, pulling her to him until there is no space between them, and the lack of heating is suddenly not an issue. Like it wasn’t an issue a few hours ago.

“Missed you for so long,” she murmurs, running her thumb over his cheek. “I know it’s a lot for you, Steve--”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that.” He kisses her, an invitation to which she responds with a yes, a silent acceptance. He can’t help but smile back. Can’t help but kiss her again. He may not belong in this world the way everyone else does, but he belongs with her. “I’m just… it’s hard to believe sometimes that this real. That you’re real.”

Diana’s smile grows wider, more relaxed. She throws her leg over one of his, and his heart grows twice as big from the way she looks at him, from the way she feels in his arms.

“I am,” she responds with a small laugh. Kisses him again. “So very real.”

Steve doesn’t think of his doubts for the rest of the night.

\---

And life goes on. A weird and wonderful thing that he can only half-understand.

The politics are impossible to follow. The games of power have grown even more elaborate over time, and for a long while, he simply doesn’t want to bother. Years and years given to fighting for something he thought was important, meaningful, purposeful, and knowing how the history has turned - he isn’t sure what to believe anymore. Diana tells him to take his time, and Steve is tempted to brush it off, but he knows that she is right. He needs to get used to the world the way it is right now, to her microwave that keeps burning his food and coffee shops, and about a million other things that Diana doesn’t even think twice about but that leave him in complete stupor more often than not.

He’ll take his time. He’ll learn. If he managed to learn how to fly a plane, surely he’ll figure out how her fridge makes the ice.

It takes him a few weeks to learn to use his smartphone – the trick isn’t getting familiar with the functions but not being too surprised by them every goddamned minute. Something that both frustrates and amuses Steve. Something that makes Diana laugh.

He loves the sound of it. The best sound in the whole universe. He can’t get enough it, can’t get enough of her, either. She is busy more often than not, juggling saving the world and curating an exhibition or ten. He loves seeing her so at peace in the world that felt alien to her the first time they met. It gives him hope that he’ll find his place in it, too. That, and he is so damn proud of her, so damn happy that she never gave up on them. That she deems this place worthy of trying.

“Of course, it is,” she tells him when he brings it up. “You are.”

He loves her. Never gets tired of telling her that.

Loves making her cheeks turn pink even though there is almost nothing that can catch her off-guard. He can. He does it at every opportunity. After all, not everyone can say that they make a demi-goddess blush with just a wink or a whispered promise.

He takes delight in the snow, despite hating it in his youth when he still lived in the Midwest – in part, because Diane loves it more than anything, and in part, because it carries a promise of new beginnings.

They watch a snowfall one night, wrapped in a quilt, Steve’s arms around her. Diana rests her head on his shoulder. He feels her body relax into him and kisses the crown of her head. For the first time in over a hundred years, he feels impossibly, endlessly content.  

“This is all I ever wanted,” he murmurs. “From the moment I met you.”

“A warm blanket?” Diana teases, looking up at him, her eyes crinkling in amusement.

He brushes her hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. Smiles. Can’t help it. “The future.”

“As have I,” she echoes. Kisses him.

Steve wraps the quilt tighter around them. She is warm and real in his arms, and the world around them is full of endless possibilities.

They can make it work.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Man, I miss the snow... 
> 
> Hope you liked it :)


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